1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink jet printer and a recording method.
2. Related Art
An ink jet printer, as an example, moves a plurality of nozzles lined up in a predetermined line-up direction of nozzles and a print material relatively in a scanning direction that is orthogonal to the line-up direction of nozzles and allows the nozzle to discharge ink droplets in accordance with data to be recorded that represents presence or absence of a dot for each pixel, thus forming dots on the print material. In addition, a line printer is known to form a print image by transporting a print material without moving nozzles that are arranged substantially across the entirety of the print material in a width direction of the print material which is orthogonal to a transport direction of the print material to perform high-speed printing. When obturation or the like causes a nozzle not to discharge ink droplets, or ink droplets discharged do not draw the correct trajectory thereof, a “dot-missing” area in which pixels where a dot is not formed are connected in the scanning direction is formed, and streaking of the color of the print material that is called white streaking occurs in the print image. Particularly, a line printer is a type of ink jet printers that does not have a nozzle to hit ink droplets directly at dot-missing pixels which are continuous in the scanning direction due to failed nozzles which fail to discharge ink droplets. Thus, streaking easily occurs along the scanning direction in the print image.
Increasing the amount of ink droplets discharged from two normal nozzles that are adjacent to a failed nozzle when compared with an ordinary case is reviewed to suppress streaking described above (for example, refer to JP-A-2006-76086). When the amount of ink droplets discharged from adjacent nozzles is increased, dots formed at pixels that are adjacent to the dot-missing pixels in the line-up direction of nozzles become large.
Ink droplets that hit the print material behave as liquid until soaking into the print material or dried. For this reason, liquid ink droplets that hit a secondary adjacent pixel which is adjacent to an adjacent pixel on the opposite side of the adjacent pixel from the dot-missing pixel attract ink droplets that hit the adjacent pixel toward the opposite side from the dot-missing pixel, and the effect of complementation in which complemental dots formed in the adjacent pixel suppresses streaking in the print image may be weakened.
Such a problem described above is not limited to a line printer and also resides in various ink jet printers similarly.